Resolution of the Second World Congress on the

Reorganization of the German Section of the Fourth International

1948

Written: December 1948 and January 1949. First Published: 1948Source:Fourth International, New York, Volume IX, No. 6, August 1948, pages 187-88..Transcribed/HTML Markup: Daniel Gaido and David Walters, December, 2005Proofread/Edited: Scott Wilson, 2006Public Domain: Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line 2005. You can freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & proofreaders above.

1. In 1933, the Committee Abroad (AK) of the Internationalist Communists of Germany (IKD,) was recognized as the official leadership of the German Section of the Fourth International. In April 1946, the International Conference directed the IEC to reorganize the German Section in collaboration with the AK of the IKD. The AK made no reply to the repeated communications of the IS on the matter. Meanwhile, the comrades of the IKD in Germany effected their organizational regroupment with the assistance of the IS and the IEC. The World Congress, therefore, provisionally recognizes the comrades in this regroupment as the German Section of the Fourth International. Furthermore, the Congress recognizes for the present the provisional national leadership which will be elected by the first National Conference as the only provisional political and organizational leadership of the German Section. After the first National Conference of the IKD, the IEC will definitively recognize the German Section.

2. All comrades who accept the political discipline of the International and its leading bodies, who work under the discipline of the national leadership, whether in Germany or abroad, and who are ready to collaborate actively in building the German Section, are members of the German Section. Until the coming National Conference, the German Commission of the IS is assigned the task of coordinating the work of the comrades abroad and those in Germany.

3. Until conditions are such as to permit regular activity of a unified national leadership, the central national leadership shall consist of two political bureaus, one in the Eastern zone and the other in the Western zone.

4. The IKD will call its National Conference not later than (date to be specified). After the national leadership has been elected, it will assume responsibility for all the work. The comrades abroad, together with the German Commission of the IS, must make every effort to send a delegation to this National Conference.

5. A comrade abroad will be elected as a regular member of the national leadership. Insofar as possible, he should attend the meetings of the national leadership. His functions will be defined by the National Conference.

6. The paper of the German Section of the Fourth International will temporarily be published abroad. Until the national leadership is in a position to appoint a permanent and regularly constituted editorial board, the editing of the paper will be entrusted to five members (three in Germany and two abroad), who will be designated by the IEC and whose nomination is to be confirmed by the coming National Conference. The editorial board is to be under the control of the IEIC.

The paper will be a propaganda organ, and will have the task of making known to the vanguard of the German working class the political line of the International and its analysis of the important questions of German and world politics both present and past. It will serve at the same time to educate the German comrades. On those questions on which the World Congress has not taken a position, the paper will express the political opinions of the national leadership.

The existing German publications will become special and local papers.

7. Under present conditions in Germany, the building of the German organization can be done only in illegality. But the German organization, in order not to become fixed in the habits, both organizational and political, of sectarianism, must take into consideration the difference between the conditions of illegality under fascism and those existing today. The situation in the Western zone makes possible certain forms of semi-legal activity there, such as fraction work in working-class parties and youth organizations, the building of an organized left wing in the unions, the organization of discussion groups on a fairly broad political basis, and penetration into the centrist organizations. All such possibilities must be carefully explored and widely utilized.

8. The most important present task in Germany is the building of solid political and organizational cadres of the Fourth International. This goal will be reached if the comrades in Germany succeed in a relatively short time in closing up the ideological gaps resulting from the isolation of their political life under fascism; if they succeed in clarifying the principal new political problems; and if they participate intensively in the international discussions, at the same time giving a basic education to all the new elements who come to the movement.

9. This ideological clarification must go hand in hand with active participation in all movements which express revolutionary aspirations against the powers that be. Through propaganda and agitation and in action, the comrades of the IKD, as well as the IKD itself as an organization, must strive for leadership of these movements in every field of social life.